News Main Menu

humor

humor

Comedian and writer Preacher Moss will present his "End of Racism" comedy tour at 7 p.m. Feb. 6, in the auditorium of Penn State Beaver's Student Union Building. The event is free and open to the public.

Bryant Reginald Moss earned the nickname "Preacher" because of his imitations of the pastor at his family's church. Raised as a Christian in a Maryland suburb, he attended a local military academy and converted to Islam at age 20.

Penn State Beaver will host The Asia Project, a spoken word poetry event, at noon Oct. 17 in the Student Union Building auditorium. Poet Asia Samson will offer a blend of humor, inspiration and reflections on daily life in his poetry while accompanied by music provided by his brother-in-law Jollan Aurelio. Samson has appeared on HBO's "Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry" and Black Family Channel's "Spoken" and has performed with Dead Prez, Mos Def and DMX.

Stress is America's No. 1 health problem, according to the World Health Organization. Seventy-five percent of Americans report feeling stressed at work, and those who work in stressful environments, like health care professionals, may face even higher levels of stress.

Health care professionals will learn the secrets to successfully managing stress and rejuvenating their body and mind on Thursday, Nov. 3 at the 21st annual Strategies: Educational Excellence for Health Care Providers at the Nittany Lion Inn. Keynote speaker and humor consultant, Joe Cardone will demonstrate the importance of laughter as a stress reliever and its positive effects in the workplace.

Come on—don't you feel just a little bit better? Intuitively, we know that laughter is healthy, and references to the healing power of a positive attitude go back as far as the Old Testament. As it says in Proverbs, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

Sometimes it's in the phrasing, a joke or pun that's funny only to insiders. "Sometimes the humor is in political or cultural situations that people have to deal with in their everyday lives," says Naydan, professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Penn State. The Russian notion of comedy, for example, often seems perverse to Americans. "But comedy and tragedy are intertwined in the Russian psyche—they call it laughter through tears."